his issue thepatnapost--after a marathon meeting & pondering--- decided
to make its birthplace, Patna as the cover story. There are various manifestations and make-ups that the city today holds in the mind of its permanent
residents. Permanent residents because unlike those who live outside but never
leave a chance to make a comment on the city, for their emotional flare up, for
their genetic gel or the once-in-a-year visit to their old-abandoned parents--- its
they who actually feel the place, its changing mood and the spirit; the breeze, the
daily grind or the civil etiquettes; the living condition, aspirations or the quality of
life. The permanent residents could be the better commentators on the city and its
civil solitude, we at thepatnapost finally agreed upon.
Though journalismâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;which we at thepatnapost call it literature in hurryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;has
nothing to do with a writers home address but we requested our writer Sanjay
Kumar and Soroor Ahmed and photo journalist Prashant Ravi to dwell upon the
subject with all their creative skills and shebang. They came out with excellent
pieces of pen and pictures for the readers to really get the feel of what Patna
today stands for.
However, for me, if I may take the liberty to say so Patna today has become a
dying city, a city with suffocation, a city with doom and no destiny. There is an eternal changeless quality about Patna: the same friendly sewers open as ever, skirting the road, the buzzing flies around food shops, the same resigned and
aggressive faces, the old, weak voice of helplessness and the same lot of corrupt
political masters reiterating their oft-repeated promises to make the city heaven
and the usual lot of Babus always in the look out for ways to siphoning off money
and minx.
Patna, for me, today is city that knows apartments though not used to them. It has
become a jungle of concrete and cars with catastrophe hanging dangerously upon
it 24X7. Frighteningly chaotic. Over a period of time Patna has become a city that
has still not made up its mind about what to reveal and what to conceal; what to
enclose and what to expose; how to grow and where to stop. The city of Patna
seemingly has been separated by time and temperament; history and geography;
science and art but all appeared semaphored by sorrow and grief. The city knows
no reason and follows no apparent logic.
But as writer-journalist Akbar says always live beyond your means and always
dream beyond your boundaries we continue to exist in this city.
Lets judge yourself while going through our cover issue and post your valuable
comments.

Hi,
Read the magazine. the content
and pics are really good.
Anuraag Sahay
I think it looks v good indeed
Alastair Lawson-Tancred, BBC

Congrats,
This efforts is really good, Keep it
up.
Deepak kumar,NSD

what a rubbish father
Sucheta Das

Leaking Bihari Bladder is a superb
piece and we must try to cope with
this issue and take a vow not to
practice it after reading this.
Ajay Kumar

Arundhati’s interview is really
good.Thanks for this post.
Asif
The Back page open space is
gr8.I’m from kakolat and but
missed the shot you people spotted..
Thanx..
Raj Kumar

Abhay Mohan Jha is literary
man,observe the things around
him very minutely that reflects in
his article..
Gd going thepatnapost..
Keep the pace
Sneha Jain
You people started a marvo job..
salute.. but please don’t write
negate stories about bihar.
Birendra Prasad

thepatnapost

Recalled the Pahleja Ghat from
Sanjay Singh’s sketch.
G P Rai

Follow us on

The Patna Post

4

C o ver S to ry

by

Sanjay K

S

18-27 march 2011

Patna Periscope
of the Patna college (oxford of the
East) is a timeless image of
changelessness emphasising that
nothing has changed from the
days of if not Chandra Gupta Maurya then certainly sher Shah Suri.
One is bound to bump into them,
their cows, their pails and cans
hanging out irresponsibly from
rundown cycles. Unmindful of
super active bacteria and Louis
Pasteur, indifferent to contaminated water that he ritually mixes
with milk (water is universal solvent – they know)they refuse to
be part of the white revolution and
insist on their own whitish –
brownish mutiny. Nothing on their
body and mind suggests any
change except a poison – filled syringe with which they inject cows.
To display some style they sometimes keep
that syringe
on that part
of ear where
old time
munshis
used to keep
pens in the
time of Mirza
Ghalib.
Similarly
public pissing
and squatp h o t o s / b i h a r p h o t o . c o m ting – done

ociologists argue ad infinitum that there is a bit of village in the urban setting and
otherwise. When it comes to Bihar
and Patna however their universal
postulate falls flat compelling them
to eat humble pie or omnivorous
crows or commonplace mynas
whatever-the reason being that
while our villages have become
completely urbanised Patna is rapidly, irreversibly and willy-nilly
turning into a big village. The way
Patna exists, survives, emotes, exasperates, cries, frets, fulminates,
gropes for identity and sometimes
thinks bears an overwhelming bucolic stamp.
Some image – ageless, timeless
and routinised – strike hard. Milkmen milking out cows by the side

The Patna Post

5

18-27 march 2011

with nonchalance and insouciance
almost borders on ascetic detachment behoving Naga saadhus and
Digamber ascetics.

of them have Achilles heels or feet
of clay and some of them collapse
like a supernova in a majestic
fashion.

A

All the same romantics need not
worry about the disappearance of
village / rural way of life as a consequence of industrial urbanization. They must take heart from
the fact that Patna is and will always be its apotheosis. Take
apartments. The great signifier of
urbanism, the ultimate citadel of
middle class aspirations, the heralder of civility and preserver of
anonymity, apartments of Patna
however end up becoming the
abyss of pervasive stagnation and
mounting frustrations. Generally

partment – dwellers detest
anonymily, poke their noses
everywhere, refuse to pay
maintenance, spit the corners,
overuse lifts to render them dysfunctional and gang up in small
groups on the basis of not class or
profession or some other secular
criteria but you guessed it right –
caste. We are really cast (e) in
stone. While female residents delight in bitching and backbiting
against one other, male ones are
partial to direct action. Caste is
the defining reality of Patna as
evident from caste rallies,
raillas and maharaillas with
lathis and guns grinding
Patna to a screeching hart.
Our approach to traffic is indifferent at best and crimi-

built on litigated land on the basis
of “managed” municipal permission, located in narrow bylanes
where autos and cattle scrach
each other while going in opposite
directions, averse to wind, sunlight and green architecture, many

The Patna Post

6

18-27 march 2011

nal at worst; our language is partial to others’ mothers and sisters
and it is why the Punjabi Diaspora
feels at home in Patna. We watch
movies and spit, spit and watch
movies, eye sexual possibilities
around and mouth obscenities; the
college campuses are dilapidated
and rundown with the intoxicating
smell of marijuana wafting in their
thick air. College hostels are timeless dens of primordial possibilities.

sought to be pushed back by likes
of Thackreys and Bhujbals. Caught
between desperate push and illusory pull they end up adorning
lanes, streets, roads, pavements,
mohallas, apartments and the Bailey Road of Patna with their thelas
and gumtis (makeshift shops put
together so innovatively in our jugaad tradition) selling chineses apples.Taiwanese papaya, bonechina,
cheap Chinese toys, gutkas allegedly made of lizards’ bodydust,
performance ennancing drugs including various lotions and potions.

Gurcharan Das loves to argue
and emphasise the point that
where there is commerce
manners are gentle and where
manners are gentle, there is commerce. Much to his dismay, how-

On the other hand our village are
unrecognizably changed. There are
ubiquitous kurkurre – cold drinks –
lays; there are polythenes for carrying as also for drinking; caterers
have replaced neighbours and the
latter have become stiff, formal,
even anonymous; English medium
schools ranging from St. Boris
(children made to sit on Bora or
humble jute sack) to St. Xaviers
adorn rural landscape and skyscape; drawing room has pushed
courtyard out; those speaking in
local dialects are looked down
upon by the Punjab-returned,
Delhi-dejected, Surat-spurned migrants who often start their sentence with “Main” and end up on a
feminine note; dare ask a villager about saawan jhula and he
will look back at you in astonished
anger to convey that he is not a

ever, Patna City is an honourable
or rather dishonourable exception.
Similarly the interaction of push
and pull factors explaning migration to Patna also comes a cropper. The pull of Patna is deceptive
and a migrant, through paucity of
opportunities and privations of life
in Patna, is pushed towards Mumbai and Surat from where they are

The Patna Post

7

18-27 march 2011

those ever eager to
illegally buy legal
land legally belonging
to the Housing board
and with the daring
to found a nagar
named after a former
Prime Minister; and
those who love to urinate by the side of a
reasonably clean urinal; and those who
pilfer energy to blast
their air conditioners
throughout the year; and those
who exchange haal- chaal while
driving bikes-mobile sandwiched
between left shoulder and left ear,
head tilted sideward, hands
stretched on the other side, bikes
moving ahead autonomously and
inevitably dangerously; and those
who honk vehicles ritually, habitually and compulsively; those under
the American influence and driving
vehicles on the other side of the
road; those who believe in absolute personal hygiene and absolute public chaos; those who in
the first meet ask the question â&#x20AC;&#x201C;
how much you earn and about
upari aamdani; those who write
you off as worthless the moment
they know you have no upari income; those who treat traffic police as useless nuisance if not
outright enemy; those urban but
not urbane; those â&#x20AC;Śâ&#x20AC;Ś.. .

dehati and that if you thought so,
you were a big idiot.
And look at Patna with signs of
decay and chaos, exhaustion and
exasperation, fatigue and frustration writ large. Attempts at renewal are welcome but how can
one renew people who have absolute faith in the Newtonian gravitation so much that when they
build mansions and apartments
they leave drainage to be taken
care of by the force of gravity. And
pavements are definitely not
meant for pedestrians who
complete with screeching trucks,
rampaging autos, arrogant bikes,
humble cycles, supremely indifferent cows, dogs seeking a place
under the sun and nanoes of the
world to move ahead.
And how can one renew people
who insist on parking their vehicles in the middle of the road; and

The Patna Post

editor@thepatnapost.com

8

An alysis

18-27 march 2011

No qua(c)kery please:

Bihar cities need major surgery

by

Soroor Ahmed

A

Though Patna witnessed rampant
construction in the last couple of
decades in the recent years this
phenomenon got further boost.
Yet the tragedy is that all norms
and rules were thrown to the wind
in the construction of these concrete structures. With more and
more craze to buy flats, commercial complexes, mega-marts and
malls nobody is bothering to even
check the quality and safety of

s Bihar falls in the Seismic
Zones-IV and V it has a history of moderate to severe
earthquakes. But unlike the
quakes of the past any such disaster now is likely to cause much
more devastation and casualties as
not only the state capital, Patna,
but other places too, even the
quake-prone north Bihar, have got
converted into concrete jungles.

Aerial shot of capitalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concret jungle

photos/biharphoto.com

The Patna Post

9

18-27 march 2011

these buildings. Not only that, several private hospitals––not government––have come up. But, it is
feared, that they too may get reduced to tombs once––God forbid–
–even a quake of moderate
magnitude hits the city. Quake-resistant structure is simply not
heard of as the builders want to
have much bigger margin.

The quake-cum-tsunami of Japan
has exposed the vulnerability of
development. This notwithstanding
the fact that the Land of Rising
Sun took all sorts of care in building cities and towns and people
given proper training.

The saddest aspect is that instead
of questioning the safety aspects
of these structures the media is
busy praising this rapid expansion
in this sector. Instead of cornering
the authorities, who are passing
such unsafe structures, it is day in
and day out, hailing the growth of
Patna. The role of media creates
suspicion as to whether there is
some builder-media-politician
nexus in this absurd concretization
of Patna or not.

T

ill a couple of decades back
one used to find lot of
thatched (khapdail) houses
even in the urban centres of north
Bihar, for example, Darbhanga.
The logic of the old-timers was
simple. As the region falls in the
seismic zone the collapse of
thatched houses would cause
much less casualties than the concrete ones. Now even in the deep
interior villages of this region we
have big palatial concrete houses
symbolizing our definition of development.

The Patna Post

Though Patna high court recently
raised alarm over such mushrooming of structures in the state capital yet there is no dearth of
part-time pen-pushers in media
and academic ridiculing the judiciary for being backward minded.
Why learn from Japan when we
ourselves have our Latur and Gujarat earthquakes. Though death is
best leveller yet a close sociological study revealed that perhaps
the earthquake is one
natural
calamity
which is
more cruel
to the rich
than poor.
While Latur
witnessed
more casualties the
villages
around it
had slightly
lesser number of death
and destruction. Similarly in

10

18-27 march 2011

yet natural calamity can cause
devastation beyond oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s imagination. What the gentleman said,
perhaps rather unwittingly, surprised me. He said that the buildings in his country can withstand
even nuclear bomb. May be true.
But what when energy amounting
to 16,000 atom bombs is created
as it happened in recent tsunami
in Japan?

Gujarat the big cities and towns
witnessed much higher loss of
lives than deep interior or Runn of
Kutch. That was simply because
there was no sky-scrapper in the
villages. So those living in them
had to pay much more fatal price
than the have-nots.
Earthquakes, floods, cyclones, etc
are too devastating natural calamities to be left just to the scientists,
engineers or experts. Only a couple of weeks back this correspondent had got an opportunity to
meet a Geologist working in the
United States. The topic was obviously earthquake. No doubt structures in the United States are not
like in India and all measures are
taken for the safety of human life

The Patna Post

As other experts this Geologist
failed to explain what will be the
use of such intact buildings as nuclear attack will certainly kill all
the inhabitants. The structure may
not be destroyed but radiation and
other impacts of the nuclear attack
would be there for years to come.

11

18-27 march 2011

photo/tanmay

But rest assured: In India, especially in our upcoming Patna, any
earthquake––God forbid, do not
talk of nuclear attack––of much
lesser magnitude than the one
which hit Munger on January 15,
1934 (8.3 on Richter scale) or
Darbhanga and adjoining areas on
August 21, 1988, will cause much
larger number of casualty.

P

erhaps keeping in mind too
much importance given to
technocrats and experts the
Planning Commission has recently
made it compulsory to seek the
opinion of anthropologists and social activists before taking up big
dams and other water projects.

human considerations while planning and executing a project. Concerns of displacement and
rehabilitation of project-affected
people and farmers are not addressed while conceiving a project.
Taking hint from what the Planning Commission had done on the
construction of big water projects,
help of environmentalists and social activists should be taken before allowing the rampant growth
of structures in the cities and
towns. One will have to concede
that science and technology have
their limitations and nature should
not be provoked too much. So if in
spite of all the measures nuclear
energy plants have let down the
people of Japan, who will take the
guarantee of the safety of big
dams on the foothills of quakeprone Himalaya.
After all an earthquake in Assam
on August 15, 1950 reduced to
rubble a hill. Now a field exists on
its place. If a quake triggers the
collapse of any high dam––once
again meant to produce electricity––the water gushing out of it
would wipe out thousands of
houses even hundreds of kilometers of the epicenter.

It has been observed that engineers are far removed from

The Patna Post

editor@thepatnapost.com

12

tendaysyoutrundledpast

18-27 march 2011

1. Caste & Consideration for Babu’s to be posted in Bihar
hile reacting over the brouhaha made against the Gopalganj District Magistrate
Pankaj Kumar Pal for being allegedly under the scanner in a triple murder case
in his parent cadre Manipur, The Bihar chief recently said that it was centre
which had deputed Pal in Bihar under All India Service rule. The problem is that people
just rake up the issues without having full knowledge…they should now that Centre had
requested Pal for his deputation in Bihar and he was being posted here…those who are
raising the issue should ask this question to the Centre?, said Nitish Kumar. But what Nitish Kumar conveniently forgot was the charge by Opposition that he was not only deputed
Pal in Bihar without any verification but also posted him as the District Magistrate despite
there were so many competent IAS officials in the state who could be given the charge.

W

And, not only this, but there are many such “imported bureaucrats” mostly from Nitish
Kumar’s home constituency and caste. The previous and present Patna DM both are from
out of state cadre but from Nalanda and of same caste. The Patna SSP is from J&K cadre
and from Nalanda. The list goes on but Nitish Kumar prefers to throw the ball on the Opposition’s court saying they were trying to divide state’s bureaucracy on caste line. However,
the buzz in Bihar bureaucratic circle today is that Bihar under Nitish Kumar is being governed by officers mostly imported from outside the state. The only criterion needed is that:
the officer must come from Kumar’s home constituency, his caste or at least knows his
Man Friday: RCP and the plum posting is guaranteed in “officially starved” Bihar.

2. Quarrying Bihar, literally !

I

n the ongoing budget session of the Bihar assembly the government has to face some
serious embarrassment when none other than member of its own ruling alliance put
them in fix while raising the issue of illegal quarrying in the state. The BJP legislator
Rameshwar Chaurasia stunned the government when he claimed that the officers of the
state forest and mining department in league with the local officials and mining mafia are
indulged in illegal quarrying of stones in about 200 acres in the state despite the state government had approved quarrying only in 4 acres. The illegal quarrying is still going unabated where this government has banned the practice.
Taken a back the state Deputy chief minister who also holds the state forest and mining
ministry Shushil Kumar Modi assured the house that he would look into the matter and the
government would not renew the quarrying licenses anymore and also not issue any fresh
licenses. Similar has been the complaint about illegal sand mining in the state on which
the Bihar chief minister who has been appreciated far and wide for his good governance
too declared that his government would formulate a comprehensive policy on sand mining
soon. But, the Opposition takes a dig: Susashan Babu is being exposed by his own family
members. Whats my name…whats my name, asks leader of Opposition Abdul Bari
Siddiqui!

The Patna Post

13

P h o to S to ry

18-27 march 2011

W

The Patna Post

14

e
c
s

18-27 march 2011

eâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re Bihari labourers working in Sub-Saharan
condition, Haitian ambience .... but still they
say there is a turnaround of my home land !!
Text & Photo :biharphoto.com

The Patna Post

15

18-27 march 2011

The Patna Post

16

18-27 march 2011

The Patna Post

17

18-27 march 2011

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18-27 march 2011

The Patna Post

19

I C C 2011

18-27 march 2011

â&#x20AC;&#x153;This Nitish Kumar dreams
of England futureâ&#x20AC;?

N

itish Kumar might
have created history with massive
mandate in the recent
Bihar assembly poll and
claiming to have made a
"turnaround" in the
state but here this Nitish Kumar
has serious business to attend to
during the long rest periods at the
Cricket World Cup - armed with a
stack of textbooks and notes, the
Canadian batsman has his high
school homework to complete.
Kumar was only 16 years and 283
days old when he played his first
World Cup match at Monday'sZimbabwe game at Vidarbha Cricket
Association Stadium and became
the youngest player to take part in
any World Cup game.
He may have scored only one run
facing 10 balls as his team suffered a 175-run loss but the
Woburn Collegiate Institute student is thrilled to represent
Canada - for the time being.
"It's a privilege, playing with great
players," he said in an interview
soon after his net practices ahead
of another tough Group A game
against Pakistan on Thursday.
Even if Kumar proves his batting

The Patna Post

talent, his team are unlikely to
play in the next World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in 2015 as
the International Cricket Council
has already announced plans to
reduce the tournament from 14 to
10 teams.
Canada also have very little or no
chance of getting Test status in the
near future.
"At the moment I am not really
concerned about that because the
focus is on this World Cup," said
Kumar, who wants to play county
cricket in England in the future.
"Without Canada, I won't have this
chance. But it will be great to play
county cricket and move forward
from there.
"I would love to play in England
where county and professional
cricket is quite good. We can't do
that in Canada. I would like to play
good county, good cricket."
When asked if he wanted to move
to any other of the better cricketplaying nations, he said: "If there
is no World Cup for Canada, then
yes. I would like to play for England or India. India may be quite
hard."

20

18-27 march 2011

The way England performed in their shock three-wicket defeat by Ireland on Wednesday, this could be sooner rather than later once Kumar
establishes his qualification credentials.
Nicknamed Canada's Tendulkar for his aggressive batting, Kumar in the
Zimbabwe match opened for Canada with John Davison, the oldest
player in the current World Cup, 24 years the senior of the Ontario-born
right hand batsman.
"It was a great game and very hard but quite enjoyable. Being from the
under 19 World Cup last year to this one I see a great difference in levels, skills and how people play."
Outside the game, Kumar says he wants to specialise in sports sciences, following his two elder sisters.

T

he Cricket World Cup is held every four years and is organized by
the International Cricket Council, or ICC. According to the ICC website, the Cricket World Cup is the "showpiece event of the cricket
calendar."

History
The first Cricket World Cup, or CWC, was held in England in 1975. The
2011 CWC will mark the 10th time the tournament has been played.

Qualifying
Under the current system, 14 teams participate in the CWC. They include the 10 ICC test-playing nations (Australia, Bangladesh, England,
India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, West Indies and
Zimbabwe), plus four teams advancing from the ICC World Cup qualifier.
The four teams to advance from the 2009 qualifier in South Africa were
Canada, Kenya, Ireland and the Netherlands.

Format
Matches are contested in a 50 overs per side format.

The Patna Post

21

18-27 march 2011

Winners
Australia is the only participant to win three consecutive titles (1999,
2003, 2007) and has won four total CWCs (the Aussies also won in
1987). The West Indies has won twice (1975, 1979), while India
(1983), Pakistan (1992) and Sri Lanka (1996) have also won titles.

2011

T

he Asian subcontinent will host the 2011 CWC. India will be
the site of 29 of the tournament's 49 matches, including the
final match. Sri Lanka will host 12 matches and Bangladesh will
host eight.

W

omen's World Cup

The Women's World Cup of Cricket has been played
nine times since 1973, with the next tournament set for
2013. Australia has five titles, Britain has three and
New Zealand has one.
The world’s fourth largest and most viewed sporting event, ICC
cricket World 2011 is a 10th cricket world cup co-hosted by
India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh.

I

n 1975 the first Cricket World Cup was contested in England as a series of one-day matches of 60 overs per side. It was held outside
England, in India and Pakistan, for the first time in 1987.

The 1987 contest also saw the number of overs per side reduced to 50.
In 2007 Australia became the first team to win three consecutive world
cup tournament.
1975 West Indies 291–8 Australia

274

West Indies won by 17 runs

1979 West Indies 286–9 England

194

West Indies won by 92 runs

1983 India

183

140

India won by 43 runs

1987 Australia

253–5 England

246–8 Australia won by 7 runs

1992 Pakistan

249–6 England

227

Pakistan won by 22 runs

1996 Sri Lanka

245–3 Australia

241

Sri Lanka won by 7 wickets

1999 Australia

133–2 Pakistan

132

Australia won by 8 wickets

2003 Australia

359–2 India

234

Australia won by 125 runs

2007 Australia

281–4 Sri Lanka

The Patna Post

West Indies

215–8

22

Australia won by 53 runs

18-27 march 2011

England ( 1975 )
•The first ball in the World Cup history was bowled by India's Madan Lal
to England's Denis Amiss at Lord's on June 7, 1975.
•India's opener Sunil Gavaskar batted through the full 60 overs in the
opening match against England at Lord's to score just 36 runs.
England ( 1979 )
•Viv Richard's 139 not out is the highest score in a World Cup Final
•Sri Lanka became the first nation to boycott a match in the World Cup
when they refused to play Israel on political grounds in the mini
tournament.
England ( 1983 )
•One of the all-time great innings, 175 not out by Kapil Dev against
Zimbabwe was lost to posterity. BBC had gone on strike that day with
the result that it was never recorded on video.
India and Pakistan ( 1987 )
•For the first time World Cup shifted from England to the Indian subcontinent.
•Graham Gooch of England became the only player to win three
consecutive man-of-match awards.
India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka ( 1996 )
•Javed Miandad became the first and only player to take part in all six
World Cup's.
•Mark Waugh became the only batsman to hit three centuries in one
World Cup.
•The semi-final between India and Sri Lanka at Eden Gardens was the
first to be awarded to a team by default, the crowd disturbance that
forced match referee to award the match to Sri Lanka.
England (1999)
•Australia crushed Pakistan with ease in 20.1 overs, replying to
Pakistan's mere score of 132 (all out in 39 overs).
•The semi-final between South Africa and Australia was one one of the
finest one-day matches in history and maybe regarded as the real
final.
•Australia lifted the title after a run of seven games without defeat.

T

he only person to have played both World Cup
Football and World Cup cricket is Viv Richards Antigua at football and West Indies at cricket.

The Patna Post

23

B ih ar D iwas

18-27 march 2011

M

eanwhile, Bihar celebrates it’s birth centenary marked
as BIHAR DIWAS on March 22nd. The celebration
goes on for three days but it’ll be an year long celebration covering not only the country but cross the border of
seven countries.
The government reportedly has opened it’s kosher like never
before for the event...... it’s not lac but crores to be spent on
this BIHAR DIWAS.

The Patna Post

24

18-27 march 2011

Creation to show rickshwpullerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life

The Patna Post

25

L o n g in g

&

B elo n g in g

18-27 march 2011

mukundsahay.blospot.com

ONE BEDROOM FLAT. . . . . . . .

A Bitter Reality !!!

A

s the dream of most parents I had acquired a degree in Engineering and joined a company based in USA , the land of braves and
opportunity. When I arrived in the USA , it was as if a dream had
come true.
Here at last I was in the place where I want to be. I decided I would be
staying in this country for about Five years in which time I would have
earned enough money to settle down in India .
My father was a government employee and after his retirement, the
only asset he could acquire was a decent one bedroom flat.
I wanted to do some thing more than him. I started feeling homesick
and lonely as the time passed. I used to call home and speak to my
parents every week using cheap international phone cards. Two years
passed, two years of Burgers at McDonald's and pizzas and discos and 2
years watching the foreign exchange rate getting happy whenever the
Rupee value went down.
Finally, I decided to get married. Told my parents that I have only 10
days of holidays and everything must be done within these 10 days. I
got my ticket booked in the cheapest flight. Was jubilant and was actually enjoying hopping for gifts for all my friends back home. If I miss
anyone then there will be talks. After reaching home I spent home one
week going through all the photographs of girls and as the time was
getting shorter I was forced to select one candidate.
In-laws told me, to my surprise, that I would have to get married in 23 days, as I will not get anymore holidays. After the marriage, it was
time to return to USA , after giving some money to my parents and
telling the neighbors to look after them, we returned to USA .
My wife enjoyed this country for about two months and then she
started feeling lonely. The frequency of calling India increased to twice
in a week sometimes 3 times a week. Our savings started diminishing.
After two more years we started to have kids. Two lovely kids, a boy
and a girl, were gifted to us by the almighty. Every time I spoke to my

The Patna Post

26

18-27 march 2011

parents, they asked me to come to India so that they can see their
grand-children.Every year I decide to go to India But part work part
monetary conditions prevented it. Years went by and visiting India was
a distant dream. Then suddenly one day I got a message that my parents were seriously sick. I tried but I couldn't get any holidays and thus
could not go to India ... The next message I got was my parents had
passed away and as there was no one to do the last rites the society
members had done whatever they could. I was depressed. My parents
had passed away without seeing their grand children.
After couple more years passed away, much to my children's dislike and
my wife's joy we returned to India to settle down. I started to look for a
suitable property, but to my dismay my savings were short and the
property prices had gone up during all these years. I had to return to
the USA ...
My wife refused to come back with me and my children refused to stay
in India ... My two children and I returned to USA after promising my
wife I would be back for good after two years.
Time passed by, my daughter decided to get married to an American
and my son was happy living in USA ... I decided that had enough and
wound-up every thing and returned to India ... I had just enough
money to buy a decent 02 bedroom flat in a well-developed locality.
Now I am 60 years old and the only time I go out of the flat is for the
routine visit to the nearby temple. My faithful wife has also left me and
gone to the holy abode.
Sometimes I wondered was it worth all this?
My father, even after staying in India ,
Had a house to his name and I too have the same nothing more.
I lost my parents and children for just ONE EXTRA BEDROOM.
Looking out from the window I see a lot of children dancing. This
damned cable TV has spoiled our new generation and these children are
losing their values and culture because of it. I get occasional cards from
my children asking I am alright. Well at least they remember me.
Now perhaps after I die it will be the neighbors again who will be performing my last rites, God Bless them.
But the question still remains 'was all this worth it?'

The Patna Post

27

T est yo u r Q u est

18-27 march 2011

Quizzically on
by

Bihar

Q-04

Dr Manish Kumar

1.
2.

Name the place in Bihar where Ganga flows in northern direction?
Rashmi Kumari of Bihar has the distinction on becoming national
champion in which game
3. Name the two famous weapon used by Magadhan ruler Ajatshatru
in his battle against Lichchavi rulers?
4. Which famous painting style of Bihar deals with the folk tales of
Bihula Vishari?
5. Name the author of the famous Urdu work on Bihar titled as
“Naqs -i- paidar”?
6. Sewak Ram and Hulas Ram were associated with which school of
folk painting of Bihar?
7. Famous revenue minister of Emperor Akbar and one of the Nav
Ratna of which court Todarmal was a native of which place of
Bihar?
8. In which historical work of medieval period the word “Bihar” has
been mentioned for the first time?
9. Name the historical site in Bihar where the remains of Neolithic
period has been excavated?
10. In which district of Bihar did Mughal emperor Akbar had planted
one lakh mango trees?
6. Triveni Sangh
Answer Q-03
1. Jaglal Chaudhury
7. Nanya Devi
2. Temple Medical School
8. Swami Vidyanand
3 1925
9. Chandeshwar Prasad
4. Koshi
10. They all come from famous
school of Madhubani painting
5. Swami Shahajanand
Saraswati
manish_kumar110@yahoo.com

The Patna Post

28

P o etry

18-27 march 2011

Rising up

by

Sanjay Kumar

Nothing to retrieve
Nowhere to go
No address
No destination.
Flotsam of shattering reality
Unsuspecting victims of vicious cycle
Innocence molested
Dignity mauled
Their land violated
Deities praying hard to be left safe
Tough luck in a harsh world !
Smeared not in deep vermilion
Soaked in blood instead
Their little, irregular heads
Split open by the juggernaut of development.
The bitter reality of the promised cargo dawns in slow motion
Fits and starts
In bursts
And finally in torrent
On its return the cargo of despair leaves nothing
Except traces of defiance amidst pervasive hopelessness.
Feeble their fight
Weak their resistance
Overwhelming the enemy
Lost their cause
But fight back they nonetheless
Like furious birds taking on arrogant jets in their backyard.

The Patna Post

29

B o o ks

18-27 march 2011

Why criticisms matter

by

Six accomplished critics explain the importance of their work
.
Pankaj Mishra

I

don’t think of myself as a literary critic. I write about novels and short
stories. But I am reluctant to describe what I do as “literary criticism,”
as I like to move quickly beyond the literariness of a text — whether
narrative techniques or quality of prose — and its aesthetic pleasures, to
engage with the author’s worldview, implied or otherwise, and his or her
location in history (of nation-states and empires, as well as of literary
forms).
This kind of reading came naturally to me in the new, very poor and relatively inchoate Asian society in which I grew up. When I first began to
read literary fiction I could assume neither a clear backdrop of political and
social stability, nor a confident knowledge of the world and assumptions of
national power. Everything had to be figured out, and literature was the
primary means of clarifying a bewilderingly large universe of meanings
and contexts.
Much of my self-education was assisted by American writers like Edmund
Wilson, Dwight Macdonald, Lionel Trilling, F. W. Dupee and Irving Howe.
Some of these were literary critics, but they were, above all, public intellectuals (a species whose irrelevance and powerlessness Alfred Kazin
seems to be mourning — rather more than the demise of a critical genre
— when he writes, “We are rushing into our future so fast that no one can
say who is making it, or what is being made; all we know is that we are
not making it, and there is no one, no matter what his age is, who does
not in his heart feel that events have been taken out of his hands”).
Coming of age during and after the progressive era, when intellectual argument and political activism promised to reshape America’s future, these
critics took it for granted that literature was among the main signs of the
times, and subject to the inquiring gaze of history and politics.
In this presumption, they were supported not so much by the Marxian
ideologues of the 1930s as by the great realist novelists, from Stendhal to
Tolstoy and Mann, who could not have written their most mature works
without grappling with the political and moral challenges of their day.
Ideas possessed a real urgency for these writers. It helped, too, that their
societies were in ferment; that the bourgeois class, to which most writers

The Patna Post

30

18-27 march 2011

and readers of literary fiction belonged, was deeply involved or implicated
in major socioeconomic conflicts; and that politics wasn’t something
elected politicians and unelected corporate elites settled among themselves.
Compared with their realist predecessors, most contemporary fiction writers in America and Britain appear to be cultivating their own gardens, on
expansive plots given them by their powerful and affluent cultures. Not
surprisingly, many writers in the West experienced the terror attacks of
9/11 as a profound challenge to their art and its underlying (and, in retrospect, quite strange) assumptions of security and stability in a conflict-ridden world.
Too many of today’s writers — the creative writing graduates, the beneficiaries of generous advances and foundation grants, and the habitués of literary festivals in exotic locations — are enlisted too quickly into society’s
privileged classes to remain, convincingly or for long, society’s critics.

L

iterary criticism, in its recent American incarnation at least, has faithfully reflected the general writerly retreat from the public sphere,
turning into a private language devised to yield a particular knowledge
about a self-contained realm of elegant consumption. It is hard to imagine
recent American literature provoking a critical response in the way of
Kazin’s magnificent study “On Native Grounds” (1942), which sensitively
recorded the evolution of many literary sensibilities against a prewar backdrop of continuous crisis and struggle.
So I can recognize, and even feel the poignant anguish, of Kazin’s sense of
an ending, his feeling that “the great confidence that man could understand his time and build from it, the feeling that provides the energy of
modern art, has gone out of us.” But I cannot share it, since literary criticism, as Kazin defines it, began to die off some time ago. (And I am not
even speaking here of the cloud-cuckoo-land of literary theory and its
weird cults of academic technicism and tenured ideologues.)
The critic who, in Kazin’s words, “sees himself working toward the future
that man must build for himself” has long been a dodo; his or her reappearance today might simply excite derision among a postpolitical generation accustomed to seeing all talk of building futures as a form of
deception.
The widespread belief Kazin blames for the irrelevance of criticism — “that
literature cannot affect our future, that the future is in other hands” — of

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31

18-27 march 2011

course took hold in cold-war America. This is not the place to go into the
all-encompassing political and cultural changes that occurred then, or to
account for the “pervasive feeling” expressed by Kazin that “our freedom is
being taken away from us.” But it may be worth briefly reflecting on the
astonishing speed with which the radical ideas and impulses of pre-World
War II America vanished from public life, with only traces lingering in some
academic outposts and isolated sensibilities like Edmund Wilson’s.
There is little point in blaming “New Criticism,” which fetishized the uniqueness and autonomy of literary works, or in lashing, yet again, the dead
horse of creative writing departments, which prescribe an antihistorical formalism while turning a noble vocation into yet another moneymaking opportunity. For these practices are merely symptoms of a larger
phenomenon that, deepening through the cold war, is only more manifest
now: mass depoliticization as political and economic arrangements seem
depressingly unalterable.
“In our political as in our economic lives,” Tony Judt wrote in “Ill Fares
the Land,” a lament for moral idealism and engaged citizenship, “we have
become consumers.” A similar docility marks our cultural choices. Most
writers as well as readers of literary fiction see it as a refined form of entertainment or instruction.

D

eprived of a whole vocabulary of moral concern, which traditionally
enlisted it into a humanistic culture, literary criticism was always
destined to turn into a kind of competitive connoisseurship — a parlor game for the increasingly professional producers as well as the passive
consumers of literature. It can have its intelligent pleasures; but, determinedly asocial, it is far from bringing, as Kazin wanted it to, a “historical
sense of what has been, what is now, what must be” into “the immediate
confrontation and analysis of works of art.”
The previous decade of severe political and economic shocks may end up
opening literary criticism and literature to the questions Kazin and his
peers asked of them. But then ours is also a much bigger and more various world than the one Kazin knew. We have easy access to knowledge of
societies and cultures about which we were previously ignorant; and there
is no reason to assume that writing from Europe and America is all that
matters, or should matter, to a critic today.
Literatures elsewhere still offer a capacious mode of intellectual inquiry,
one that can seamlessly accommodate the insights into human lives of-

The Patna Post

32

18-27 march 2011

fered by history, philosophy and ethnography. To examine the work of Lu
Xun, China’s foremost modern writer, is to be taken through his anguish
deep into Chinese self-perceptions, from the long Confucian past to the
weirdly hybrid capitalist-Communist present. It is to understand not only
his experiments with many different aesthetic forms and genres, but also
his country’s tormented recent history, not to mention the implications
these developments hold for the rest of the world.
Indeed, the specific historical circumstances that confine the critical reception of literatures in Europe and America to a few specialists do not exist
anywhere else. Societies in Asia and Latin America are far from politically
static or jaded; the conflicts, exuberance and vulgarity of 19th-century Europe and America have reappeared there in magnified form, and an inquisitive writer-critic can only revel in them.
Both Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner from China, who is a
literary critic by profession, and Mario Vargas Llosa, the literature laureate
from Peru, testify to the impossibility of considering aesthetic matters in
isolation from social and political movements. They confirm that a writer’s
individual self-awareness is always historically determined, and that one
cannot assess a writer’s work without examining her particular quarrel with
the world, the rage or discontent that took her to writing in the first place.
A concentration on personal style alone may also reveal the richness or banality of a writer’s imagination. But the line of inquiry that connects a
writer to her world runs through quirks of individual personality and literary manner to broaden into larger moral and political issues. The critic who
follows this method, staying close to the texture of social history as well as
to aesthetic experience, is likely to avoid the intellectual isolation and selfpity of the kind Kazin describes.

C

ertainly the critic’s curiosity, endlessly ramifying, will keep him very
busy — and gratified. For as Edmund Wilson, a compulsive learner of
new things, once put it:
“The experience of mankind on the earth is always changing as man develops and has to deal with new combinations of elements; and the writer
who is to be anything more than an echo of his predecessors must always
find expression for something which has never yet been expressed, must
master a new set of phenomena. With each such victory of the human intellect, whether in history, in philosophy or in poetry, we experience a deep
satisfaction: we have been cured of some ache of disorder, relieved of
some oppressive burden of uncomprehended events.”
co ur t sey - new y o r k t i m es

The Patna Post

33

Y o ur ow n A g o ny A unt

18-27 march 2011

Dr.Binda Singh,
Clinical Psychologist

Q: My husband and I have
been married for a while, with
our relationship going through
the normal ups and downs.
How do we know if we are
ready for a baby?
A: One of the worst reasons to
have kids is to believe it will better
a marriage. It has been found that
parenting places more strain on a
marriage,especially if it’s not a
good one to begin with. Having a
kid is a wonderful but full-time responsibility that involves sacrifices.
You should ask your gut feeling if
you have enough time, energy
and financial security which are
vital in raising a child. Also remember that having a baby at an
older age may lead to complications.

Q: I happened to chance upon
my colleague’s husband
coochie-cooing with another
woman in a restaurant –
should I rat on him?
A: How close you are to this colleague can determine whether informing her about her spouse’s
flirtations will work well or backfire. This is a very sensitive topic
and how you broach it is also very
crucial. Honesty is not always the
best policy and the messenger
may get shot sometimes. If possible take her close friend at work or
her sibling into confidence
ask.drbinda@gmail.com

Q: My job gives me financial
security and independence --but I hate it.Should I quit?
A: Success comes to a person who
loves, knows and believes in what
he /she does. If wealth is your
only parameter of success, you
may enjoy the luxuries without
ever ‘enjoying’ yourself. So the
idea is to find what you really like
,for true reasons. If it’s only work
issues and not your job itself that’s
bothering you , first try and resolve the issues before quitting.

The Patna Post

One answer for all your
psycho quest

P
c

A dv ance
sychotherapy

c

&

ouns el ling

e ntre ,

PATNA.

C all- 9835018951

34

Ne w s t o Am u se

18-27 march 2011

Snake bites model's bust,
dies of silicon poisoning

A

snake attacked an Israeli model during a sexy photoshoot by
biting into her surgically enhanced breast and later died from
silicone poisoning.

Orit Fox, a B-list model and actress initially looked comfortable during
the shoot in Tel Aviv, wrapping the massive
boa constrictor around her legs, waist and
neck while doing her best to look sexy, reports the Daily Mail.
In a figure hugging red and white striped
dress, which revealed maximum cleavage,
she gamely tried to take their bonding to the
next level by licking the snake's face. As she
manoeuvered the animal into position for the
'kiss' Fox loosened her grip on its neck, and
after being licked the reptile reacted angrily.
It aimed straight for Fox's prized assets and sunk its teeth deep into her
left breast. An assistantrushed in to help her pull the snake off and
after a few seconds of struggle the creature released its grip. The peroxide-blonde model was rushed to a nearby hospital and given a
tetanus shot. However, the snake wasn't so lucky and died from silicone
poisoning.
ANI/London

To all my dear, far / near

HOLI
greetings

The Patna Post

35

Archive

18-27 march 2011

MASTERstroke

A

rtist Sanjay Singh has stretched his creative pen â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;n pencil to draw the

Y

past of the present.

Ara Barracks

ear 1773 to1816. This historic longest building of its time was constructed to provide transit facilkities to British expeditionary forces
conducting operation from Calcutta towards Nothern provinces.
The money for building was realized from the Raja of Ara after his defeat from the british forces under lord Clive.
The most significant history of the barracks, is the gruesome blood-bath
it has witnessed of innocent Indians.All the native men of the 40th infantry,while in their sleep,mercilessly bayoneted death by British Majestic Forces.Out of fear that Indian soldiers may join the 1857 revolt in
the morning.Soon after the Sepoy mutiny, cannons were drawn,sepoys
were picked up from their villages,brought infront of the Ara barrck and
blown to pieces,much in the same Mangal Pandey fashion.
However,to cleanse the blood from its hand, during WWII it was converted into Hospital ward.After Independence new raising for Bihar Regiment were born in these barrck and today after heavy renovation it
stands guard to the Nation.

The Patna Post

36

Bolly Gupp

18-27 march 2011

Sonakshi paid 2 crores for Kamal Hassan's film

T

he actress-price in the regional cinema has reached to an all
time high with Sonakshi Sinha carrying home a pay packet of Rs.
2 crores. She has been paid such a mammoth amount for her
upcoming stint opposite Kamal Hassan in Selvaraghavan’s untitled film.
Sonakshi Sinha has now become the highest paid actress for the any
regional film. Sources have said that the actress sealed the fat deal
with some clear cut conditions. The actress had reportedly told the
makers that she will not do kissing scene nor intimate scene. Though,
the script demanded it, the makers
bowed down to her terms and decided to drop some scenes.
Sonakshi Sinha has now overtaken
Ileana D’Cruz in remuneration. The
latter was paid 1.5 crore for
Shankar’s Nanban. However, Kamal
Hassan’s next film will take off by
this month end in London. The
movie is inspired by Hollywood film
Hannibal.

Sonakshi and Akshay are back in Mumbai

F

ilmmaker Shirish Kunder is happy to have successfully com-

pleted the shoots of his upcoming film ‘Joker’ in the freezing winters of Chandigarh.

Two days ago Shirish posted on a microblogging site, “Just packed up.
It’s a schedule wrap for Akshay, Sonakshi and Minissha. We continue
shooting with Shreyas for two more days.” And his latest tweet reads,
“JOKER’ - Live update – It’s our last day of shoot in Chandigarh. Tomorrow back to Mumbai.”
The uphill task is yet to be meted out in post-production and promotion
planning
gupp’s ink

The Patna Post

37

L if estyle / F ash io n

C

18-27 march 2011

amouflage with the colours of

holi this month check out our pic
to keep you chic

The Patna Post

38

18-27 march 2011

The Patna Post

39

Food Stall

18-27 march 2011

H

oli is incomplete without delicacies. Enjoy our
recipies for this holi wth a little twist.
Thandai

For the fIllING
4 tbsp crumbled paneer (cottage cheese)
4 tbsp chopped strawberries
1 tbsp chopped almonds (badam) and raisins (kismis)
2 tbsp powdered sugar
1 tsp rose water
For the SAffRON SyRuP
3/4 cup sugar
2 pinches of saffron (kesar) strands
2 tsp milk
2 tsp rose water (optional)
For the GARNISh
sliced strawberries
mEThOD
For the mAlPuAS
1.
Mix the cream and flour into a batter.
2.
Smear very little ghee on a frying pan and spread a small amount of the
batter on it.
3.
Fry on both sides using a little ghee until golden brown.
4.
Place the malpuas in the warm saffron syrup for 2 to 3 minutes and drain.
For the fIllING
1.
Mix the paneer, strawberries, almonds, raisins and powdered sugar.
2.
Add the rose water and keep aside.
For the SAffRON SyRuP
1.
Dissolve the sugar in 1 cup of water and simmer for 5 minutes to make a
syrup of thread consistency.
2.
Warm the saffron in a small vessel, add the milk and rub until the saffron
dissolves. Add to the syrup.
3.
Add the rose water and keep the syrup warm.
hOw TO PROCEED
1.
2.

Fill each malpuas with a little filling and fold into half.
Serve garnished with strawberries

Foodie

editor@thepatnapost.com

The Patna Post

41

chalchitra/Theatre

18-27 march 2011

Alam Ara - the first talkie movie revisited
On March 14, 1931 - exactly eighty years ago the police had to be summoned to the Majestic cinema hall in Mumbai (then Bombay). The reason for
the feared stampede was the uncontrollable response of movie-goers to the first Indian talkie,
Alam Ara.
Ardeshir Irani's Alam Ara is not just a movie, it is a
legend. Movie history records it as the first Indian
talkie.
Irani the head of Imperial Film company and maker of silent
films like Navalsha Hirji(1925), Mumbai Ni
Sethani (1924) Paap No Fej (1924) and
Shahjehan (1924), was a visionary who
saw that the film industry was about to be
revolutionalized by sound and beat several
others to get Alam Ara to the theatres first.
Irani's family was in the musical instruments business but wanted to get into
films.
He began as an exhibitor, moving on to coown Alexandra Theatre with Abdulally
Esoofally in 1914. The success of Dadasaheb Phalke's Kaliya Mardan
and Krishna Janam convinced him to get into film production.
The first Indian talkie, Alam Ara, was released on March 14, 1931, at
the Majestic Cinema in Bombay, narrowly ahead of Madan Theatres'
Shirin Farhad. It was advertised as "All Living, Breathing 100% Talking
Peak Drama, Essence of Romance, Brains and Talents unheard of under
one banner."
The film had the first ever film singer WM Khan, the first hit number
De de khuda ke naam pe (then a big favourite with beggars) among
its 10 odd songs, a real-life princess Zubeida as heroine, the handsome
Master Vithal as hero and Prithviraj Kapoor as villain.
There were huge crowds outside the theatre. Tickets were sold 'in black'
According to reports, "Police aid had to be summoned to control the
crowds ....Four anna tickets were quoted at Rs.4 and Rs.5." Later,

The Patna Post

42

18-27 march 2011

units went on tour with the film, taking sound projection equipment
with them, and everywhere the crowds were uncontrollable.
The audiences went crazy over Alam Ara and Indian films haven't
stopped taking or singing since. The first talkie films in Bengali (Jumai
Shasthi), Telugu (Bhakta Prahlad) and Tamil (Kalidass) were released in
the same year plus 22 Hindi films. A year later, several talkie films were
made in Marathi -- including V Shantaram's Ayodhyecha Raja, which
made a star out of Durga Khote. Filmmakers went a bit berserk over
songs, with a film called Indrasabha having an incredible 71. By 1933,
sound was well entrenched in the Indian film.
American Michael Denning was the song recordist for Alam Ara, and according to available information, Irani (inspired by the English film
Showboat) made the film with junk equipment. But he learnt the basics
of the then tedious process himself.
With typical Indian disdain for history, no print of the film exists. Just a
few stills and scraps of the film have been preserved. It was a fantasy
based on Joseph David's popular Parsi theatre play --like most other
films of that era.
In an interview with film historian B.D.Garga, Irani said, "Since there
were no soundproof stages, we preferred to shoot indoors at night.
Since our studio is located near a railway track... most of our shooting
was done between hours that the trains ceased operation. We worked
with a single system Tanar
recording
equipment...There were
also no booms. Microphones had to be hidden in
incredible places to keep
out of camera range."
All other films by Ardeshir
Irani have been forgottenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;
he was also the one to attempt international projects
and a colour film in 1937 with Kisan Kanyaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but he will always be remembered as a pioneer because of a lost movie called Alam Ara.

The Patna Post

43

Bollywood Genes

18-27 march 2011

Bollywood once had a Jewish connection

U

p until the 1920s, Bollywood could not find female actors. Acting was
not considered worthy of ‘good’ women. So men were shaving off or
hiding their moustaches, and wearing saris to play women’s roles.
Eventually, the women came. But they were not Hindus or Muslims.
They were Jews.
An Australian academic and documentary filmmaker, Danny Ben-Moshe, travels back in time to document this little-known aspect of the Hindi film industry
in his documentary Shalom Bollywood. Translated from Hebrew, it means
‘Hello Bollywood’.
Ben-Moshe says, “For Hindu and Muslim women of that time, acting in films
was not a respectable profession. But Jewish families living in India, both the
Bene Israelis and Baghdadi Jews, were comparatively more liberal. And their
women, with their lighter skin and western looks, scorched the screen.”
So in came Susan Soloman, or as she was popularly known, Firoza Begum,
Sulochana (Ruby Meyers), Patience Cooper, the first Miss India Pramila (Esther
Abrahams), Rose Ezra, and later, Nadira (Florence Ezekiel).But the Jewish contribution to Bollywood did not end with its women. The script and songs for
India’s first talkie Alam Ara (1931) was written by a Jew, Joseph Penkar
David; the famous choreographer David Herman, whom even Raj Kapoor
wanted to work with, was a Jew; Kapoor’s biographer and famous film historian Bunny Reuben was also a Jew; and so was David Abraham Cheulkar, a
well-known actor who starred in over 100 films such as Boot Polish (1954) and
Golmaal (1971).
The wildcat of Bombay
In the early days, India’s celluloid queen was a woman called Sulochana. With
a salary of over Rs5,000 per month, she earned more than the governor of
Bombay. This even stirred a debate in the parliament once. She was also
among the few who owned a Chevrolet 1935. “She was born in 1907 as Ruby
Myers and worked as a telephone operator, before being discovered,” says
Moshe. She was awarded the 1973 Dada Saheb Phalke Award and some of her
popular films included Typist Girl (1926), Balidaan(1927), and Wildcat Of
Bombay (1927), in which she essayed eight roles, including that of a gardener,
a Hyderabadi gentleman, a street urchin, and a European blonde.
India’s first Miss India
However, by the 1940s, Sulochana’s star was beginning to fade. And that of
another actress was on the rise. Her name was Esther Victoria Abraham, more
popularly known as Pramila. She became India’s first Miss India (1947), a feat
made even more unique when her daughter Naqi Jahan became a Miss India

The Patna Post

44

18-27 march 2011

pageant winner in 1967. She starred in hugely successful movies such as
Bhikaran and Mother India (not to be mistaken with Mehboob Khan’s film of
the same name). The latter ran for an incredible 82 weeks.
Known for her fiercely independent spirit, Pramila left her home in Calcutta at
the age of 17 and traveled to Bombay. She got a job as an entertainer in a
Parsi travelling theatre company. Whenever the reel in the projector had to be
changed, for those 15 minutes, she was required to dance and perform to
keep the audiences quiet. She went on to star in about 30 films as a vamp
and a fearless stunt star.
Later, she had to wage a battle to retain her house in Shivaji Park. When her
husband left for Pakistan, the family was in debt. “She warded off auctions on
two occasions and an injunction on another,” Ali says. Today the house stands
proudly with the name Pramila Nivas on its gate.
The man whose songs started it all
On March 14, 1931, Alam Ara (Light of the World), India’s first talkie was released. It was directed by Ardeshir Irani but its screenplay and songs were
written by Joseph Penkar David, a Bene-Israeli Jew.Joanna Ezekiel, a creative
writing tutor, is his great-granddaughter and lives in York, England. “My father
moved to England in 1964. He remembers my great-grandfather as a gentle,
eccentric man. In the late 1930s, my father lived opposite the Wadia Movietone studios for a time. He would watch my great-grandfather enter the
buildings every weekday at 8am wearing his fur hat, however hot the
weather.”
‘I won’t seduce you’
The story goes that Nadira, born Florence Ezekeil, had once told a nervous
film journalist who had come to interview her, “Don’t sit on the edge of the
bed, you will fall off. Come closer and sit comfortably. I won’t seduce you.”
She, of the famous arched eyebrows and vamp roles, was perhaps Bollywood’s
most well-known Jew. In Raj Kapoor’s Shree 420, she was Maya, a woman
seen with c igarette in one hand and a glass in another, trying to lead the hero
astray from his real love, Vidya, played by Nargis. “She was way ahead of her
time,” remembers actor Deepti Naval, Nadira’s longtime friend. “In those days
heroines were portrayed as shy and demure. But here was someone so forthright, strong and fiery.”
Ben-Moshe will be visiting India later this year to complete his shooting. He
hopes to have the film ready by 2012. “It is so strange. In Hollywood, Jews
worked behind the camera, as producers (Metro, Goldwyn), often hiding their
heritage. But in India, the Jews have been just the opposite. They have been
confident and often facing the camera,” he says.